I've spent several days out of the past week farming numbers. Most people think farming is an outdoor, field based living - and don't get me wrong, I'm lucky to spend a LOT of my time outside, cultivating food. But this is also where I get the majority of my income, which means I have to treat it like a business. And that translates to time spent planning, projecting, documenting, budgeting and researching. Farming numbers.
This week, it was trying to get things in place to simultaneously roll out new vegetable and strawberry sites. I haven't actually seen the new vegetable site, and I'm missing critical details like dimensions, water pressures and soil health. But I need a number for irrigation to plug into my budget, and so I spent several hours researching various micro-sprinkler options for different irrigation pressures so that I could provide a range for that cell in the spreadsheet.
I feel confident that I'll be able to grow my core crops this fall, but what will my harvest numbers look like from week to week? That depends on when things go in the ground, the weather, the soil, irrigation - so many factors, but I need a number for the spreadsheet. And how much of that harvest will sell each week? Also subject to lots of variables, but it's a blank that needs filling.
It's not so much trying to predict what will happen - these numbers are certainly going to be wrong. But they provide some marker to measure myself against and track my progress. When I built mathematical models of disease transmission, my advisor used to say that all models are wrong, but some are useful. I think of number farming as a similar exercise. It illuminates the possible, highlights the impossible and gives me a path to follow. Even if I'd rather be in the field!
